Timeline for Is there any word for the opposite of a "bug" in programming?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
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| Jul 4, 2019 at 6:16 | comment | added | outis | "Bug" is usually classified as "jargon", which is in the realm of "technical/trade slang" (there isn't a hard taxonomy for these things). | |
| Jul 4, 2019 at 6:13 | comment | added | outis | @ShaunWilson: the exact historical origin of "bug" isn't certain, but it probably comes from "bugbear" or "bugaboo", and was in usage by the 1870s, well before vacuum tubes or inanimate computers. Literal bugs in a machine were far too uncommon to inspire terminology; when a moth was found in a relay, it was noteworthy enough to be logged and then talked about in computing folklore. | |
| Apr 14, 2015 at 19:14 | comment | added | wilson0x4d | i see. the difference between this and slang is that "bug" has a formal definition, one that it is taught to students in higher education, based on that definition the closest antonyms of "software bug" would be a "software fix" (or simply a "fix") and a "software feature" (or simply a "feature") -- i.e. rather than an undesired behavior, a desired one. synonyms for "bug" include: fault, error, defect, flaw; it's worth noting that no educational resource seems to list any antonyms for "bug" as the term relates to software | |
| Apr 14, 2015 at 17:41 | comment | added | Oleksii | Shaun Wilson, a great point about the history of the term. Still I am not sure if it is a term or a slang word for this reason: the term is something that is singular, singularity is a property of a term. Something other than a term may be slang. In case of a live bug in vacuum tube it was the term describing the object literally. In case of computer bug, error is implied. | |
| Apr 14, 2015 at 17:31 | comment | added | wilson0x4d | "bug" is not "slang for error", "bug" is a historical term derived from the process of fixing old vacuum tube based computers from yesteryear, where a moth or similar would find its way into the computer causing a short (and an error in programming). Thus the term "debugging" was born, and still, today, we refer to programming errors as "bugs". Often users refer to things as bugs which are not, such as feature changes, or unexpected behaviors which are not bugs (but were otherwise unintended.) This is also why we have a running joke about certain bugs being features. </history-lesson> | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 20:54 | comment | added | Agi Hammerthief | "... the only features or functions that need to be explained to users are the ones that do not behave the way you expect". So, basically, explain everything, then. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 1:39 | history | edited | Oleksii | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 11, 2015 at 23:43 | comment | added | Oleksii | WernerCD, right, edited. The VW is funny, but I am not sure it is proper in language usage discussion | |
| S Apr 11, 2015 at 23:39 | history | edited | Oleksii | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 11, 2015 at 23:07 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Apr 11, 2015 at 23:39 | |||||
| Apr 11, 2015 at 23:03 | comment | added | WernerCD | Its not a bug, Its a Feature | |
| Apr 11, 2015 at 20:47 | comment | added | Oleksii | reirab, yes, 'undocumented feature' is joke, but it exactly matches what the question describes, '... a function that is desired but isn't supposed to be working yet unexpectedly starts working'. Everything undocumented but existent is a bug, but some bugs behave like features, they look like features. | |
| Apr 11, 2015 at 19:26 | comment | added | reirab | "Undocumented feature" is a joking euphemism for a bug... which is what this is. Unexpected behavior (if it's unexpected to the program's designers/developers, at least) is always a bug, regardless of whether any given result of said bug may be desirable or not. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 10:52 | history | edited | Oleksii | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 10, 2015 at 10:38 | comment | added | Brian Hitchcock | The way tech writers see it, the only features or functions that need to be explained to users are the ones that do not behave the way you expect. This includes bugs as well as other counter-intuitive program behavior. And we document what the humans must avoid because the program does not prevent them from doing it. There are always gaps in the input edits. These are neither bugs nor features; I call them infelicities. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 4:02 | comment | added | aaa90210 | They are not the jokes at all. The joke is "It's not a bug, it's a feature!". | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 2:50 | comment | added | keshlam | And being undocumented, it may change at any moment so shouldn't be relied upon... unless you can convince the developers to make it official. This isn't really an English question, though. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 1:34 | history | answered | Oleksii | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
